The Geekdom Challenge

Well, I missed last week. Not intentional. Of course it never is. The first of the week was lost to work, the rest of the week lost to finishing my prep for the Halloween D&D game.
It went well, aside from not finishing the module. It was a lot of fun, and the players were into it enough to want a second game session.
The module, for anybody who may be interested, is the "The Skinsaw Murders" by Paizo Publishing. It's a fantastic second installment to a very cool Adventure Path called "Rise of the Runelords."
I have altered the adventure a bit. I'm only using about the first half of the adventure (or really 2/3rds) which leads the PC's to and through a haunted mansion. The idea behind this one shot is that a worshiper of Hastur is using the Yellow Sign to try and manifest an avatar of Hastur in Sandpoint.
The players have no idea who the murderer is, what the strange symbol being carved in the victims chest is, or what it is all leading too. I've changed who the murderer is for this game, simply so it ties into the history better (and doesn't lead them to future installments of the AP.)
The players have embraced their pre-gens (all from various Adventure Paths) and it has made the game incredibly enjoyable. It gives me hope for running an actual AP for this group sometime in the near future.

I'll post on the final results once we've had a chance to finish the rest of the adventure, which won't be for a few weeks.
Till then, see you soon.

Perhaps it's time to resurrect this. Funny it's my blog, yet Curtis was the only one to submit to it.
The original intention was to have a weekly blog submitted by myself or another geeky individual.
It failed.
Something about working 60 plus hours a week, plus running two games (once a month, and twice a month respectively) set it up to fail. Honestly couldn't ask anybody else to contribute when I myself wasn't doing any more. So it failed. A handful of good blogs by a compatriot and then it lays quiet in the dust.
We'll see if I can't start it up again.

It's been 2 years. Let's see if a weekly blog here can happen.
I think it can.

I think we'll start with the current state of gaming.
For a long time there were many, many game systems. Rolemaster, Dungeons & Dragons, Palladium, Whitewolf, the list travels on.
Then came d20 and the OGL. What is this you ask? Well it's a set of game mechanics. Rules if you will. These mechanics were opened up so anybody could use them. Publish materials for them, adventures, settings, new mechanics to add to them. It was a golden time. It was time when anybody with access to desktop publishing software could have a go.
A lot of shit was published.
A lot.
In fact it got so bad at one point there was a small crash in the gaming market.
Then they (Wizards of the Coast) updated the rules to 3.5 (these rules were the rules for Dungeons & Dragons, if you were curious) and things began rolling along again. Then they (Wizards) stopped renewing licenses for several lines of products. First Ravenloft. Then Dragonlance. Code Monkey publishing (a software company) and the magazines Dragon and Dungeons. They disappeared. In 2007, they (that is Wizards) announced (what I had been expecting) 4th edition D&D.
There was some gnashing, there was some name calling. All in all it was what it was. Sword & Sorcery Studio, the publishers of Ravenloft disappeared. Margariet Weiss Studio, the publisher of Dragonlance focused on the licenses for Serenity, Battle Star Galatica and now Supernatural using their own system. Code Monkey... actually, I’m not sure what happened to them. Paizo, the publishers of Dragon and Dungeon magazine started their own adventure and world line, recently published an update to the 3rd edition rules (tweaking some things and renaming it Pathfinder) and is enjoying some success. Wizards are churning out books for 4th edition now. Several publishers have jumped on with 4th (Goodman Games for instance) others have all but disappeared; still others are having a go at publishing for both.
So where does that leave gaming?
Well, many systems have always existed, even during the golden age of d20, but now it's fully fractured again. Open gaming (which deserves it's own blog) is still alive, but not like it was. It's sort of reached its middle age. This is unfortunate. There are games to be played however, and its worth your time, if you feel inclined, to try them.
That’s what the purpose of this blog is for. To discuss new games, and old games.

No geek worthy of the title can NOT know what a
role-playing game is. It could be anything from Dungeons
and Dragons to Babylon 5 (or whatever the newest game
coming out happens to be). For the truly geeky, there are
Live-Action Role-Playing Games--LARPS, where you create a
character and act out the events.

Fewer geeks would claim to know much about paintball.
Unfortunately, the game has come to be characterized by
paintball tournaments, in which the volume of paint sprayed
downfield is often more of a factor than any degree of
accuracy...players dodge and slide from one inflatable
bunker to the next until they either get smacked by a shot,
charge headlong into the wrong bunker (and then get smacked
by a shot), or blindside their opponent (smacking him with
a shot--which is often followed closely by getting smacked
by a shot yourself by the guy covering the person you just
shot).

I started playing paintball back in its early days...not
quite in its infancy--I came along late enough that the
Splatmaster pistols were regarded as archaic (ironically,
paintball sidearms have been enjoying a resurgence, but
that's for another time). When I started playing, the
SL-68II (a pump-action paintball marker) was THE gun to own
for your average player, the VM-68 was the state of the art
in semi-auto markers, and the venerable Autococker was just
hitting the market. I have been playing long enough that
my preferred marker--a Tippman Pro-Am--is one that I got
for free, nearly ten years ago, because it was old enough
that when my roommate moved out unexpectedly (shortly
before his $400 phone bill arrived, ironically enough), he
left it behind because it was old enough to not really be
worth much as a pawn item (he did take his Amiga
computer...but once again, that's a post for a different
time).

But back to the topic at hand...in those days, the majority
of the games were played recreationally...a bunch of guys
and their friends grabbed some paintball guns (either their
own, or a few from the few paintball rental places that
were available at the time), some paint, their camoflage
clothing or just some grungy clothes they didn't worry too
much about, and headed up into the hills to find a couple
of acres of woodland to play on.

These days, that is called 'woodsball', and it's enjoying a
resurgence. Once again, THAT is a post for another time.

Recreational paintball players have, for years and years
and years, enjoyed 'scenario' games...games which have some
kind of a storyline to them. My first one was loosely
based on the Twilight 2000 RPG (I was playing a Czech
private who wanted to defect to the West). There are games
that hearken back to D-Day, to Operation Desert Storm, that
pit teams of terrorists against counter-terrorist squads,
that renew the infamous feud of the Hatfields and the
McCoys (complete with government revenue officers trying to
break up the moonshine trade of both families), and even
just as simple a premise as "You're Team A...They're Team
B. Each of you needs to try and capture, then hold this
hill. We start in ten minutes..."

I have, for the last four years, participated in one
paintball event regularly each summer...a scenario game
called Aliens in the Rockies. Originally inspired by the
storyline of the film Aliens, it's grown a little in scope,
and transformed...combined elements of other popular sci-fi
flims...added and lost characters...but it continues to try
and draw out the recreational-level paintball player for
just a good time spraying some paint at the guys on the
other team.

To be more specific, there are two teams involved in the
game. One team is the Weyland-Yutani Corporate Security
force, generally called the Mercenaries. The other team is
the Colonial Marines (yes, THOSE Marines, although not THAT
unit--they all died, after all). The game is set on planet
LV-529 (or some other, similarly named world), where word
has been received of another Alien infestation. The
Marines are dispatched to investigate and save
survivors...the Mercs are sent to reclaim samples for the
Corporation.

There are a series of missions to be accomplished...ground
to be captured and held at specific times in the game, fuel
dumps to attack or protect, Alien tissue samples to
retrieve, etc. There is also just the general focus of
trying to out-do the other team. Players, when hit, return
to 'dead zones' at their end of the field...and every 20
minutes or so, dead players re-insert into the game, so
everybody gets a chance to play a lot. Game play typically
starts around 4:30-5 pm on a Friday, runs until 11 pm or so
Friday night (with a dinner break--we have to stop at 11
because the neighbors like to complain that we're making
too much noise after that...so we stop BEFORE the sheriff
comes out to tell us to call it a night.) Play resumes
Saturday morning around 9:30 or so, with a lunch break
around 12:30, and runs until 5 or 6 pm. There are no real
prizes for the winning team...just bragging rights. This
is recreational, after all.

There is a third group that operates on the field, of which
I've been a part each year. We exist strictly to add extra
nuances to the game, and to let the guy running the game
finesse the situation on the field so that one team doesn't
end up totally dominating the entire game and making life
miserable for the other team. The third squad is made up
of Aliens, Predators, and the Black Ops Brigade (formerly
the Arms Merchant and Terminators, but those characters
were eliminated this year).

The Aliens have some pseudo-body-armor to indicate that
they are, in fact, Aliens. If you see them on the field,
your best bet is to just walk away. This year's rules
stated only that Aliens were 'hard to kill' (read, the only
way you kill an Alien is to shoot him so many times he
decides it's not longer worth it. Since Aliens tend to run
in packs of at least five, your odds of putting that much
paint on target, past body-armor, before being shot out
yourself are somewhere just past non-existant...some of the
guys playing Aliens would stand there and take the hits
just to claim they shot out fifteen guys on one team...)
Aliens are not commonly in play, as they have a tendency to
totally dominate the action whenever they appear.

I'll skip over Predators for now, and write them up last,
because I played one, and I loved it. The Black Ops
Brigade is a mercenary force that can hire out squads to
provide extra firepower to either team. The Black Ops guys
tend to have some of the newest, biggest toys (like the A-5
'Double-Trouble'...twin paintball guns rigged side-by-side
with a hand-crank on the trigger--fires about 30
paintballs/second into a general vicinity, which is all but
guaranteed to make anyone in the target zone crawl away
whimpering, provided they haven't got so much paint on
their goggles that they can't see where they're going).
These guys also double as Aliens from time to time...tend
to be more experienced players, with proven
level-headedness so they don't get out of control if
someone gets a little overzealous shooting at them, and
also usually with a little better grasp of small-unit
tactics than the average guy on the field (an eight-man
unit, coordinating their efforts, can mow down a vicious
swath of joe-average paintballers pretty easily.) They are
hired out for a limited amount of time, to either side...so
they may start a battle on one team, and be fighting for
the other side by the end of the same battle (it doesn't
happen often, but it IS possible.)

My part in the game was being a Predator. And it was
actually the introduction of Predators into the game that
got me excited enough to shell out $40 to play (not to
mention taking time away from work at what is a busy time
of year for me...) We don't really answer to anybody,
we're just there to introduce an element of random hazard
into the game. The Predator players are pretty much
hand-picked for their ability to be patient and sneaky.
Most of us wear ghillie suits (my older brother, who is the
Head Predator, actually NEVER uses a ghillie suit, and
routinely makes kills that just leave people scratching
their heads and going, "How did he do that?") Our job is
to go out on the field and pick off targets of
opportunity...to trophy-hunt, in other words.

Because we're 'trophy hunting', if one team is dominating
the field of play, we generally end up shooting at that
team a lot. If the other team sways the balance in the
other direction, we start thinning their ranks instead.
But anybody is fair game for us (although we generally
don't shoot Aliens or Black Ops...we're there for the same
reason, ultimately--to make the game more fun and exciting
for the group as a whole.)

The Predators have options on how to make kills, too...the
first, and most natural, is to shoot people. This comes in
handy at times...but it's too easy at times, and at others
it's just not safe. Paintballs hurt like hell when they
hit you from five feet away, and people routinely end up
that close to Predators over the course of the game.

The second, instituted after the first year of play was
done and stories were told of all the people who walked
away from Predator encounters clean because they were too
close to shoot, is to call them out. This was inspired by
the movies...in every scene where the Predator makes a
close-up kill, it says something or makes a noise to alert
its prey that the end is nigh ("Over here", "Danny-Boy",
"Want Some Candy"). Our version is the less-artistic,
more-to-the-point, "I'm a Predator, you're dead." Someone
in our line of fire, at a distance to close to shoot
safely, will hear those words...often, they don't believe
them at first, and sometimes they don't even realize where
the words are coming from. And, occasionally, we have to
prove we're right (they'll instinctively try and shoot once
they realize where we are...at which point, courtesy goes
out the window and we light 'em up.)

The third option is one I haven't tried yet, and it is the
pinnacle of daring and skill. It has been accomplished on
the field a few times...and the victims re-tell the stories
as often as the Predators do (it's kind of heady, being the
stuff of Paintball legends...) That is to actually
physically tag someone out, with either your hand or gun
barrel. This comes in handy when you're the Predator and
someone actually steps on you while you're hiding (this HAS
happened, but not to me) or they hide in the same bush as
you (which has also happened, even to me, although it was a
big bush and I couldn't reach them with a hand...so I just
called them out.)

I realize I've spent WAY too much of this post talking
about a single aspect of this game...but it's the only one
with which I'm experienced. If you want a break from the
first-person shooter video games...along with a better
insight into just how unreal they truly are...try
Paintball. And if you need a little something to add some
spice to your paintball, try scenario games. And if you
want to try your luck against some of the sneakiest
paintballers in the game, try the Aliens game...it's an
annual event, held the weekend closest to the first full
moon after Labor Day (sounds kind of like Easter, huh?
It's so there's enough light to play at night...)

I hope to see you on the field. You better hope you don't
see me, though...


Curtis Kidd
"Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel could be you!"

It's been a month since my last entry, and nobody else has
had anything to contribute in the world of geekdom. So I
figured I'll go ahead and take my turn again, and we'll see
if it inspires anything.

No true geek would be worth the title if he (or she) hadn't
had at least some contact with anime. There's plenty of it
out there, and it's become less and less 'out there'. Some
titles are even cult classics outside the anime
world...Akira comes to mind.

But in this case, I'm reducing myself to being a geek in
the world of geeks, because I'm not going to be writing
about any new, remarkable, awesome, or really cool anime
products. Nope, I'm going back to one of the oldest, most
widely-known anime series ever released--Robotech.

The second Robotech series, specifically--Southern Cross.
I just watched it over the weekend (yeah, the whole
series)...and I was struck on several occasions by what an
incredibly poor job of translating must have been done. I
had, at one time, the first episode of each of the Robotech
series, in the original Japanese with English
subtitles...and let me tell you, Carl Macek (the mad
scientist who decided to turn a late-adolescent adventure
series into a childrens' sci-fi cartoon) REALLY botched the
job in a lot of ways.

One big hint--if you ever take occasion to watch Southern
Cross, keep track of how often some characters' ranks
shift. The lead character, Dana Sterling, starts out as a
second lieutenant...but gets promoted within a few
episodes. However, throughout the series, she's often
referred to as a 2nd lieutenant again...and, if I recall
correctly, at one point she's also called a captain. Her
sergeant, Angelo Dante, regularly goes from Sergeant to
Corporal and back, sometimes even in the same episode.

There's also 'Supreme Commander' Leonard (that's really the
title by which he's called...) There's hints at a whole
subtext written into the story, about him trying to
maintain his position, but just when they start to get
intriguing, they're swept aside. That makes me think that
the subtext was something that got half-lost in
translation...or half-created. I say 'half-created'
because Leonard insists on carrying out an attack, at one
point, claiming it was the choice of the government.
Several other suicidal attacks later, he's still as
insistent, but there's no longer any mention of the
government. There's also never mention made from any of
his subordinates of complaining to the government about his
orders and how wasteful they are. I don't remember
(because we didn't meet Commander Leonard in the first
episode), but I wouldn't be surprised if, originally, he
was actually some kind of military governor. It would make
the blind acceptance of suicidal orders a lot easier to
understand--if he's the top authority, there's no one to
complain to. And if there's someone to complain to, you
can bet people would do it.

I still enjoyed the story--it's very simplistic, and a
little disjointed (the original series, all three, were
NOT, originally, intended to follow one after the other,
from what I've gathered...that's another Carl Macek present
to his American audience--so there are scenes which refer
to the earlier series, but don't make much sense in the
context). But I still enjoyed it. Sometime, I'm going to
start in on the third series...it's the only one I haven't
seen completely. It's been years since I watched the
others. But, hey...thank goodness for the Internet, eh?
Great way to chase down stuff like this.



Curtis Kidd
"Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel could be you!"

Today's Geekdom Post is brought to you by Curtis Kidd. He's writing on a topic I only encounter occassionally: the Video Game. And now...


An Everyman's Guide to Counterstrike: Source

One of the advantages to having a lot of extended family
that lives in the area is that I get involved in a lot of
activities I would otherwise never get around to. One of
these is LAN parties; I don't know that many people that
enjoy playing on the computer, outside of my family circle,
that live in this area.

And I have to credit my cousin, Roy, with introducing me to
a lot of games. The most recent one on the list is
Counterstrike: Source. This is, simply, the original
Counterstrike, with a few options built in to tweak some of
the game options.

Now, before you get into this and wonder why I haven't
answered all the questions you might think to ask, look at
the heading again. I consider myself an 'everyman'...Joe
Average, someone who knows enough about computers to get
them to work most of the time, but not enough to do
anything beyond some pretty basic trouble-shooting. I
don't worry much about the fine details of how games
work--I just worry about whether or not they're fun to
play.

Quick overview--Counterstrike is a first-person-shooter
game, built on the Half-Life engine. Players can be
Terrorists or Counter-Terrorists--the grown-ups version of
Cowboys and Indians. Both teams play basically the same,
but have a few different options for choices in weapons.
Two different game scenarios exist--Hostage Rescue or Bomb
Planting. The different scenarios put pressure on the
different teams to be the pro-active element in the
game--in the rescue scenario, the CT team has to penetrate
a location and either eliminate all the terrorists or else
find the hostages and return them to a neutral safe-zone.
The bomb scenario requires the terrorists to infiltrate a
target, to one of two bomb sites, plant the bomb, and
protect it against being defused...and hopefully make a run
to safety before the bomb goes off. Or, optionally, they
can just kill all the counter-terrorists.

While this runs off the same engine as Half-Life, I prefer
Counterstrike...it may be the same, in the actual mechanics
of the game, but you don't have all the 'trick' effects of
the weapons. You fire, and bullets fly...and when they hit
a target, it hurts it. No guided missiles, or fancy
ray-guns, and the sights on all the weapons are easy to see
(which is NOT true in Half-Life). As I told my brother
when talking to him about it, it's kind of like playing a
digital version of paintball.

The big advance between Counterstrike and CS: Source is how
the multi-player options work. The original forced a
balance of players between teams--which is nice, if you
have a well-balanced skill level among all your players and
everyone has a nice, even temper. The group I play with
had two or three outstanding players, and many is the time
we wished we could split them up to pit the two of them
against the five or six of the rest of us (we ended up
playing Call of Duty for that...a review for another time).
You could, with some effort, track down programs to set up
'bot players', computer-controlled opponents...but the
quality of the bots was hit-or-miss, and you typically got
one skill level only. If you were a proficient player,
this made it challenging. If you were a novice player,
trying to get some practice, this made it infuriating.

CS: Source now has an option where you can set up one team
with a variable number of players, which can all be bots.
You can set the skill level, limit the options for weapons,
and otherwise tweak the game to create a scenario to
optimize your satisfaction with play. There are also
additional options (with me being a non-die-hard gamer, I
don't know if the list of options my cousin was tweaking
came with the software, or if it's a list of cheats that he
found online somewhere...but the printed list didn't look
like anything official), so you can adjust the other
aspects of the game as you go.

It's fairly graphics-intensive on your system...if you're
not set up to handle high-quality graphics smoothly, you'll
bog your system down in no time flat. And if you're
planning on playing any sort of sniper role in the game,
lowering the graphics quality isn't a viable option.
Character motion is relatively fluid, weapon recoil comes
into play, and you have to deal with a blinding white
screen and muddled sound if you get caught in a blast from
a flashbang grenade. If you find yourself taking fire,
your motions are impossible to control (some less-capable
systems just freeze the character, rather than jerking it
uncontrollably). Realistically, you can't armor your head
very effectively--and if you get shot in the head in this
game, you will die (there's even a special graphic that
pops up to indicate kills by headshot, as well as graphics
specifically for grenade, and each weapon. There's also a
special option for team-killing, if you want to force
team-mates to deal with friendly fire situations.)

You are limited to buying the weapons in your category
(counter-terrorist/terrorist); but you can steal weapons if
you happen across someone's corpse. If you die after that,
you lose the weapon, of course...and there are some weapons
that are better-suited for various situations (sniping with
a shotgun doesn't work...neither does trying to shoot
through a wood wall with a submachine gun. But a sniper
rifle will do either one. However, unless you're looking
through the scope of the rifle, you've only got an educated
guess on where the shot is going to go.)

Things can be very fast-moving--a round can be over in a
matter of a minute or so, depending on whether or not your
team runs into the other team...or they can be very
slow-paced, depending on your style of play (I tend to be
the slow-creeping, stealthy type, which has its own
advantages and disadvantages...in most scenarios in this
game, however, that doesn't work very well. The graphics
don't accomodate it very well.) There are, as in reality,
some tactics that are very successful in one situation,
which don't work at all in others. The variety of
available maps for this game forces a certain degree of
tactical flexibility, and players that excel on one map may
find themselves floundering on another. Familiarity with
the game can be as much a factor as anything else...knowing
the capabilities of each weapon is a big plus; but knowing
your way around the maps is every bit as helpful as any
weapon.

Overall, I really enjoy the game. My biggest single
complaint about it is that you have to download updates
from the Steam website occasionally...and these are NOT
small updates. We had several machines set up and running,
but had to update a couple of them this weekend...one of
them took HOURS to download the last 20% of the update.
Steam REALLY needs to come up with some mirror sites for
the updates, to facilitate this process. You also have to
purchase an account with them to get the updates ($20 if
all you're working on is CS...but if you want access to all
their other game options, it gets pricey in a big rush)--I
believe your first account is paid for with your game, when
you purchase the software. My guess is, this is their
answer to the arrival of serial number cracks that are
often easily located on the internet.

I REALLY enjoy the fact that I can go and play with all my
gaming buds, and nobody is walking out at the end of the
night feeling resentful that they had a bad evening. You
can still play head-to-head if you so desire, but it's no
longer a requirement. For people like me, who enjoy the
sense of playing as part of a team, it's a great tweak.
And, I'll tell ya, there's a real sense of satisfaction
when you take up a position and gun down the other team
with a heavy machine gun, to be answered with the howls of
appreciation throughout the room at your success
(especially if the bots have been running rampant for the
past several rounds of play).

If you like first-person shooters, want something with
contemporary weapons and better-than-decent graphics (it
was very gratifying to shoot a couple of the terrorists the
other night and see them pitch headlong out through a
broken window), and really like the option of being able to
play WITH your buddies, instead of against them, I
recommend this one. Just make sure you get started on your
updates WELL in advance of the LAN party...or you could
find yourself sitting for hours, waiting to update, while
your buds are racking up a digital body count and war
stories galore.


Curtis Kidd
"Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel could be you!"

Third Party Publishers.
They have become the heart and soul of the d20 gaming industry.
There is a lot out there, some of it good, much of it bad, sadly it isn't always easy to to determine what is what.
For the next several geekdoms I'm going to examine and review a few third party products and companies. Should be fun.

Quick run down for you would be geeks. There are a couple of things called OGL or Open Gaming License and the d20 license. The OGL essentially allows companies and would be roleplaying game writers to use materia,l published, unpublished and copyrighted, under that license in material they are producing... as long as they acknowledge, with the entire license, that it is OGL material. The d20 allows them to make things compatable with the d20 systems, the base system for Dungeons and Dragons and d20 Modern, and Starwars d20. Essentially it makes it easier to produce things for Dungeons and Dragons and the d20 system. Dungeons and Dragons is a game with settings, world backdrops in which the game is played. Typically fantasy, alot of home spun systems are actually better thought out and executed than "Official" products. This licensing agreement now lets those home spun systems become published systems.
There are advantages to both licenses: the d20 license means the material is recognized as being fully d20 compatable, and is intended for use with Dungeons and Dragons, while the OGL is a little more open and free (most of this material is also intended to be used with Dungeons and Dragons but doesn't have the product support from copyright holder to Dungeons and Dragons).
Most d20 publishers have been kicking around in the gaming industry for quite a while, and these folks are able to put forth some quality products. Hey, that's to be expected if you do nothing but gaming stuff day in and day out. Sadly alot of would be d20 and OGL publishers don't put quality stuff out.. though they try.
Some of the major players in the third party market include these include: Fantasy Flight Games who publish the Legend and Lairs books, the Midnight campaign setting, Dawn Forge campaign setting and the DragonStar campaign setting. Alderac Entertainment Group, which publishes the Rokugan d20 setting and other source books for the d20 system. Bastion press which publishes a variety of source book materials and the Oathbound campaign setting. Mongoose publishing, who publishes a variety of generic sourcebooks and the Slaine campaign setting. Sword and sorcery studios that have a variety of secondary settings including Ravenloft and the Scarred Lands. Sovereign Press, the current publishers of the classic Dragonlance setting as well as thier own Sovereign Stone setting. Greenronin press who publishes a variety of useful sourcebooks and supliments. Privateer Press, makers of the Iron Kingdoms campaign setting. Monte Cook's Malhavoc Press, producers of alot of valuble resources. And finally... yes finally for the purposes of this little blog: Mongoose Publishing, producers of the Conan campaign setting and many, many, many resource books and supliments.
These are only the major companies, and even some of these are slowly becoming relegated to footnote in the third party publisher chronicles. Many are putting forth quite quality products, some have a mixed bag. A couple produce other non-d20 gaming material and non-OGL gaming material. Along with a couple of dozen d20/OGL publishers that have come and gone over the last five or six years, there are scores of e-book and print on demand publishers out there. And there are companies online that have sprung up to provide the service of selling these books.
Some of these companies have the finacial support (because they've been around producing games for many years under a different system or have the support of a larger company).
I am going to review, over the next couple of posts, some of the third party material I own or have access to. Look for reviews of campaign settings, and individual books.
Should be exciting... or really dry, guess it depends on how much you like gaming.